


Songbird

by sasha_t



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Confinement, Fatherhood, Gen, Guardian-Ward Relationship, Kidnapping, Monster - Freeform, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 08:01:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4340438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_t/pseuds/sasha_t
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is not for those who prepare, it's for those who happen to be in the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Songbird

“Songbird?”

Elizabeth knelt near her friend, one hand on his leathery talon in utter amazement. Had she imagined it?

“Two times two.” 

It was an embarrassingly pedestrian request in light of the answer she was almost certain of getting, but she couldn't think of anything better at that moment. She was gripping Songbird's index finger rather more forcefully than she had at first realized; despite his incredible size, she had to remind herself often that the exoskeleton covering all of him had been constructed, among other things, to enhance the human body's natural sensitivity tenfold. At least, that was the parameter given in a late version of his specifications, one he himself had brought among a handful of books and magazines not long ago. 

She had assumed it was a person in there from the moment she laid eyes on Songbird. Instantly, she recalled overhearing a conversation many years ago between reverend Comstock and an unflappable nameless man. It was about one year before the Tower was built. She was playing chess with Robert Lutece in one of the studies of the Lutece mansion, the one Robert favored due to the serene afternoon light pouring in from the large bay windows. He had just taught her the rules of the game and the characteristics of each piece. They were into their third match.

“The queen,” she mused, viewing the board intently from above, high on the tips of her toes.

“Hm?” said Robert, equally engrossed.

“She looks after the whole army.”

“If she chooses.”

“She can bring soldiers back to life.”

“Yes. Not quite realistic, is it?”

“No. Unless they aren't really dead.”

“How so?”

“Well, they're simply off the board. The rules account for that, too.”

“Pitiful sight, all strewn about, no square to stand on.”

“Perhaps it's another order altogether.”

The 11-year-old was quickly discovering classic strategies on her own, under Robert's astounded gaze. He shifted in his chair, very much looking like he wanted to pull Rosalind out of the conversation downstairs and into the study, but reigned in his excitement. He watched the board.

Elizabeth took Robert's heightened state to be an honor; after all, she knew how well-regarded the Luteces' scientific achievements were in Columbia as well as below; she had read the papers, had seen people courting the twins socially and professionally, lavishing profuse compliments at functions, on the streets, in the shops, even on the beach. It made her warm in the heart to see Robert, especially, taking pride in the attention he was getting. Rosalind was more reserved, but still content. If life had been difficult for her in the past, she did not show it. Elizabeth found her self-possession stylish.

“Albin countergambit,” spoke Robert softly, almost whispering so as not to shatter the magic around the table. His left hand forayed briefly over the chess board and then returned to his cheek, where it had alighted many minutes ago. His right was tucked under his left elbow, hugging his ribs. 

The hands of a kind man, Elizabeth thought. Long fingers slightly turned upward at the outermost phalanx, tracing a lilting curve. Fleshy fingertips. Rosalind had observed that his hands were his most feminine and therefore most endearing trait. She had the same hands, but on her they looked masculine.

Those hands had cupped her face years ago, when a tear opened and a Tasmanian devil lunged through, jaws promptly clenching her ankle. Robert spun around at her searing scream. 

“Lizzie!”

He grabbed the growling animal by the hind legs, then quickly changed tactics and went for its jaws, left hand on the mandible, right hand on the maxilla, prying open what he quickly estimated to be nature's most ferocious compressive mechanism. Of course, that was not so. But to him at that moment, it seemed as if nature had arbitrarily closed its doors in his face. He suddenly felt vulnerable, as if all of his painstakingly gathered knowledge and insights had led him down a cul-de-sac.

His palms would later require twelve stitches, Elizabeth's ankle four, but for now he managed to kick the beast unconscious. His heart pounding uncontrollably in his unaccustomed chest, he knelt before the little girl and took her in his arms. His eyes were out of focus, yellow spots were flickering randomly across his field of vision. Having confirmed that she is indeed real and otherwise unscathed, he raised his tattered hands to her cheeks, not thinking clearly. The salt of her large tears mingled with his outrageously red blood, gathering at the tips of her tiny chin and his elbows. He felt her jagged gasps on his mouth. It was then that he realized he'd been holding his breath for quite a while. The world turned black.

“Uncle Robbie! Uncle Robbie!”

He awoke to her tiny, 4-year-old frame kneeling on his chest, one hand on his nose, the other tugging weakly at his hair.

“Lizzie...”

He gently raised his torso, holding Elizabeth's curled up fists in his blood-soaked fingers, moving her slowly to the side. He took off his cravat and tied it around her bloody ankle. It was so incredibly small compared to the wound. Nobody was around. A secluded spot, grassy and neglected, just the way he liked. They had gone on a picnic. He had started to talk about the strange animals below. One of them, a particularly dangerous one, lived on the island of Tasmania.

“Are you all right, dearest?”

The little girl nodded, sobbing, raising herself in anticipation of being lifted up.

He lifted up the child in his shaking left arm; his right hand held tight the scruff of the still unconscious black marsupial. On the way home, he was pondering what he had just witnessed. A gaping hole in nature. There were no doors for that. As he walked, he kept looking at Elizabeth. She seemed to know. Her frowning eyes a boundless shade of blue behind a pall of awful fright and concern for Robert, her little mouth squished shut from the pain. She had stopped crying, her head bobbing softly with each of his hurried steps. _Time to teach her new words_ , he thought.

The day of her first chess game, she was brimming with new ideas for which she, again, had no words. Again, he was there to teach her. It was the way the two of them had become accustomed to giving and receiving mutual affection. Rosalind dealt with the business aspect of this relationship. That's what she was doing downstairs at that very moment. _Is she even bothered by this?_ he seethed.

In Columbia, as everywhere else, every thing had its price. Including the joyful, trusting rapport he had built with this child. He felt loved by her. She seemed to accept his love equally easily. In the long years during which the Luteces acted as her guardians, Elizabeth blossomed into a bright, kind, sensitive young person. It was mostly due to Robert's awkward guidance, but the fact that Rosalind chose to let Elizabeth observe her more closely that she would have let anyone else also contributed. People around them suspected, for a brief while even Rosalind, that there was more going on between the two than either of them let on. In fact, there was nothing of the sort. The rumors had made Robert feel dirty. What he felt for the child was as pure as a man who had crossed over from another universe could feel. He had held her in his arms the day Dewitt had given her up. After bringing her to Columbia, Comstock had all but forgotten about her, no doubt at his wife's insistence. Though regular, his visits were brief and non-committal, somewhat confusing the girl. Nobody was to tell Elizabeth who her father was. Robert was the one who fed her, bathed her, clothed her, taught her to walk and talk. People had no idea. It was only after she started opening those tears that she suddenly became interesting to the Great Father. 

A quick kiss on the brow awoke Robert from his bittersweet reverie. Catching the tail-end of a newly introduced grammatical construction, _loud smooch + “Check mate!”_ , he let out a long, smiling breath and lay his white king on its side. His pride knew no bounds.

“Why am I not surprised?”

“After I return from the ladies' room, I shall give you another chance,” replied Elizabeth, beaming.

If this had been Rosalind at the other end of the table, he would have launched a salvo of clever retorts, near-insults, teases and shenanigans as a matter of reflex. Not with Elizabeth. Such behavior seemed out of place. Compared to the girl, both he and his sister seemed inferior in some ways. Not because she could alter reality, but because she could create love in people's hearts. In his, anyway. _Or are these two things related?_ he considered. _There might be more to physics than physical matter..._

“Love is an overrated concept, brother,” he had heard Rosalind say one day.

“Don't you...,” he didn't quite dare form the word.

“Love you? Of course. But there's more to it than mere affection.”

“I'm starting to suspect there's nothing more to it. In the best way possible, mind.”

Rosalind had stood still, screwdriver in hand, eyes traveling to a valve on the dome of the Contraption.

“Ah. You mean it's not just a matter of semantics, of how one chooses to slice reality and name each bit. It's a matter of how reality is in fact structured. The ontology of love as opposed to toe epistemology of it.”

“Precisely.”

“Hm. I'll have to think about it. I still hypothesize that it has to do more with how comfortable each of us are in using the word **love**. For my part, I try to circumvent it, shunt it. Why? Because I find it imprecise, and imprecision can have disastrous consequences. You, brother, are more free with it. It suits your hands. As for Lizzie, she seems to have no need of it at all.”

Although far from a consensus, Robert had been grateful. Rosalind, it was becoming apparent to him, was at core a better person than she was allowing her actions to show. Suppressing her luminous shadow, as a Jungian might have put it. For reasons he had yet to coax out of her, she was playing the business woman-cum-scientist even at home, probably more so now with him there. She was in danger; they both were. But for now, he was content to have something solid to work with: his conviction that she would never go too far.

As Elizabeth headed back to the study, she heard Comstock's familiar stern tone. Only this time it was tinged with a peculiar impatience; if she hadn't known the man all her life, she would have called it crudeness.

“You forget, doctor, Columbia is a floating city. No land-based design will do.”

There was a pause, and the sound of paper being shifted.

“Air, then?” boomed a stranger's baritone voice, the kind that carries through the thickest walls even in a near-whisper.

“Your psychologist will pinpoint the right candidate.”

Another pause, this time longer.

“An aviator.”

“I'll expect your man tomorrow morning at 8:30 at the air base.”

“Of course, I shall have to attend. Marquiss might know something about the mind, but the biology must be right as well.”

“No advanced equipment. Pick three, put them under, bring them here. You can conduct all the tests you care to in this building.”

“And the girl? A compatibility study is needed.”

“No.” Thinly veiled anger muddled Comstock's delivery. “Manage without.”

“But I've already explained to you the process of imprinting,” replied the man, impassive.

“Clearly you haven't got my meaning, doctor. Elizabeth will not know that the creature exists. It will guard her unnoticed, unseen. She will live like a normal child.”

“It is hardly a normal child, reverend. We need to ensure that the conditioning is both powerful and permanent. We need her brain-wave pattern, her blood chemistry, her fingerprints, her retinal- ”

“No!” Comstock had stood up, judging from his thundering footsteps.

“In these circumstances, I cannot guarantee success,” the man said. Even to Elizabeth, who knew of Comstock's awe for scientists, the man seemed to be pushing his luck hard. _Any second now..._

A long, defeated sigh. 

“Do what you can, doctor. Elizabeth shall have no part of it.” His manner had become somewhat conciliatory but remained nonetheless firm.

“Madam, is she ready?” This question was directed at Rosalind.

“In a moment,” sounded her voice. Was there any hint of distress? Elizabeth couldn't tell.

The girl stopped listening and made her way back to the study, not knowing what to make of it. Anxiety spread in her chest like mold assaulting a damp wall, overpowering any guilt she might have felt for eavesdropping. The sight of Robert's calm, smiling eyes eased her troubled mind a bit. When Rosalind finally sought out the pair, they were in the middle of a conversation about classical music.

“If you want emotion, go Schubert, Chopin or Tchaikovsky. If you want to expand your mind, go Beethoven. If you want freedom, go Mozart.”

“Freedom? Hm. What do you mean, Uncle Robbie?” asked Elizabeth, eyes wide. She had never heard that term being used like this before.

“He's all style, dear. Very little emotion. It's all play, good fun. He may put on the clown paint or the angel wings, but he's none of that. Pure style. Pure music.” 

Robert was so sweetly smug and relaxed as he pontificated, that a neglected smile quickly sprouted, claiming all territory across Rosalind's countenance before she could intervene. Her brother was so darling sometimes. She put on her concerned frown, stepping closer to the doorway. She waited for Elizabeth to respond.

“Like Aunt Ros?” Elizabeth asked.

Robert burst out laughing, then tilted his head to one side, thoroughly amused. Behind the door, Rosalind was thoroughly taken by surprise.

“Splendid! That's exactly it, Lizzie. Now that phenomenon that is my sister has an almost accurate description!”

“Make me sound positively monstrous, the pair of you!” chided Rosalind, smiling again as she crossed the threshold, too distracted by what she was about to do to take genuine offense. _This is what I am, a hollow dry husk _, she thought with bitterness. _Brother, you've made such a warm home for my soul in your heart that I can't call it to me anymore. It won't listen. Perhaps when we're both dead, it will wander back out of pity._ She had no way of knowing both Robert and Elizabeth had really meant it as a tribute to her, not an insult. Who would dare mock Mozart?__

“Lizzie, pack a small bag,” Rosalind commanded quietly.

“Are we going somewhere, Aunt Ros?” The child's words rang sweet with anticipation. None of the brilliance displayed earlier during the chess match. Only joyful trust.

“Yes, dear. Your Uncle Robbie will take you.”

_If Uncle Robbie is taking me, it can't be a bad place. Not even Aunt Ros is that cruel._

Rosalind gave Robert a dark look. As Elizabeth ran to her room, he stood up slowly, almost hesitant to leave the confines of his grossly over-sized sofa. He loathed this sofa. He had likened it to a Venus flytrap, had tried to convince Rosalind to switch, “for your health”, “for your looks”, for your professional advancement”, “for me”, but she would have none of it. Why did she keep it in the house, then? Mother's. Now it seemed the most inviting hiding spot in all of Columbia. He felt as though he were being shoved into a barroom brawl.

**Author's Note:**

> Bioshock Infinite is one of the first games I've ever played, not even knowing it's part of a trilogy. I've been curious what's under that bird costume ever since playing Bioshock 2, where the player controls a Big Daddy. I've got maybe five chapters planned, see how it goes.


End file.
